Adrian Edmondson is quietly spoken with a shy laugh and a tendency to self-edit as he speaks. For some reason, we journalists can never quite get over this.

He’s Ade Edmondson, the TV-trashing punk Vyvyan from The Young Ones! He was the chainsaw-wielding, plank-smashing Eddie Hitler in Bottom! He’s in a musical outfit called The Idiot Bastard Band!

Never mind that Edmondson has also done quite a bit of “serious”

acting; travelled Britain to sample its regional cuisine; did well in the latest series of Celebrity Masterchef... this man was the screaming Peperami sausage for goodness sake!

But while we may be unable to get over it, Edmondson himself is doing a pretty good job. A few years ago he even announced his decision to quit comedy altogether. Well, sort of.

“People make you say things,” he says. “I never quit.

I never even started. As far as I’m concerned everything is one continuum.”

He has given up on any ideas of making another Young Ones however and last year pulled out of Bottom reunion Hooligan’s Island after reportedly being reminded of all the reasons he and Rik Mayall stopped working together. Sometimes, he says, you have to know when to call it a day. He doesn’t want to end up like the Rolling Stones, still lurching through their greatest hits in their dotage.

“I look at the Pythons and I notice they all stopped doing comedy. I think it’s because you’ve kind of done it all after a while and you want to do other stuff, aim for more than just laughs.”

Comedy has changed immeasurably since Edmondson burst through on the alternative comedy scene of the ’80s, and he doesn’t much care for the way it’s headed.

“We used to lampoon the Establishment.

Now comedians start as the Establishment. I think you can even take a degree in comedy somewhere.

“It’s great that so many people want to do it but I don’t find much of it very interesting. I don’t know if that’s a lack of imagination in comedians or that TV producers don’t allow people the space to try things and make mistakes any more. They just want panel shows it seems, and observational comedy.”

He made one attempt at “getting the band back together” when he and wife Jennifer Saunders reunited with Dawn French and Nigel Planer for a 30th anniversary special of their satirical ’80s success The Comic Strip for TV channel Gold.

“It was crap, wasn’t it?” he sighs. “I’d rather do things I’m interested in these days.”

For a good few years that’s meant music; he frequently tours with The Bad Shepherds and The Idiot Bastard Band, which also features fellow comics Phill Jupitus, Neil Innes and Rowland Rivron singing a mix of old novelty songs and new comedy numbers.

Music has always run parallel to Edmondson’s other work but now he’s chosen to put it centre-stage, not for the acclaim it might bring (“We’re hardly the next big thing”) but just for the sheer fun of it.

“The band started as a hobby,” he says. “Now it’s a big hobby. We do about 100 gigs a year. It feels like it did when Rik and I started because you’re doing what you enjoy doing, you’re able to keep doing it and eventually it becomes your job. Touring is a nice way to earn a living.”

The same could be said for his recent TV work; examining the quirkier side of British life in Ade’s Britain, bantering with Janet Street Porter in the Masterchef kitchen... why not? At the moment, he’s enjoying a return to the stage in Neville’s Island at Chichester.

Hang on, isn’t that a dark comedy?

“They say it’s a dark comedy... I think what they mean is that it’s interesting.

It’s well-written. It’s real.”

He plays one of four businessmen sent on a teambuilding exercise that goes drastically awry. Shades of The Comic Strip’s Four Men In A Car episode?

“It is actually.

It’s kind of Four Men meets Lord Of The Flies.”

But he’ll readily admit he devotes the most energy to his personal life. The 56-yearold has just found out he has a second grandchild on the way (his eldest daughter, Ella, gave birth to Charlie last year) and he’s every inch the doting granddad.

He’s always been a family man, he says, and was bereft when his three daughters gradually fled the nest and the “sticky buns and cups of tea after school” became a distant memory.

All three girls have taken creative paths – Ella is a singersongwriter, Freya a fashion designer, but it’s only Beattie who’s followed her parents into comedy, performing in sketch groups Lady Garden and Birthday Girls, as well as in Ben Elton sitcom The Wright Stuff.

“We thought she was very brave,”

Edmondson remarks of her decision, meaning that she was bound to be (and has been) compared to her famous parents. “We watched her do her first show at uni and I have to admit it was nervewracking. But luckily she’s funny.”

The family has pulled together even more tightly in the past couple of years as Saunders has undergone treatment for breast cancer, now in remission.

He prefers not to discuss it; he hates the media’s tendency to frame these things as “battles” – “It’s just a long, slow, miserable grind.” But moreover, he likes to keep his private life private.

Rare is the showbiz marriage that lasts nearly 30 years and Edmondson attributes part of that success to him and Saunders keeping themselves to themselves.

The couple met at London’s famous Comedy Store at the start of the 1980s, where they also met their future comedy partners Rik Mayall and Dawn French.

But while their professional partnerships have been dissolved, their own relationship has been a constant.

“It’s the only thing that really matters in life, isn’t it?” he says.

“The people you love.”

* Ade Edmondson appears in Neville’s Island which opens at Chichester Festival Theatre on Thursday (September 11).

To book tickets visit www.cft.org.uk.